1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
networking expert, December 25, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: The Concise Guide to Enterprise Internetworking and Security (Paperback)
It is obvious that this book was written by a pro. As a veteran networking person I have to say that this book cleared some issues and certainly helped implement and enhance the network at my company, thanks.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Browse at the bookstore, but do not buy., January 4, 2001
This review is from: The Concise Guide to Enterprise Internetworking and Security (Paperback)
I am a network security engineer who hoped to find a concise volume on networking and security, suitable for review by my colleagues and students. I was disappointed. The book is haphazard, poorly edited, and written at less than a professional level. While the chapter on choosing an ISP is helpful, it can't carry the whole volume. I dislike writing 2-star reviews, but my overall goal is to give straight advice to Amazon.com customers and technical security professionals.
First, the authors and their editors should realize "thus," "therefore," and "rather" are not conjunctions, and "however" as used in the text isn't a conjunction either. The frequent joining of sentences by these adverbs annoyed me. I expected more from the co-author with a degree in English literature. Second, attempts to sound cute fall flat. Page 21 says "The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is one of the most popular protocols in the TCP/IP stack. But you don't need us to tell you that." Indeed, why bother writing it in a "Concise Guide"? Third, the book lacked enough diagrams to illustrated key points, and some figures weren't clear. Where in figure 2.10 are we told that "8 | 7 | 6 etc..." mean bits?
Beyond syntax and style, I found technical errors. In chapter 3 the authors repeatedly misname a SYN flood as a "TCP SYN scan." They mislabel their three-way handshake figure, and don't understand the true victim of the DoS in figure 3.2. On page 71 they say "The intruder gains access to your system usually by installing a series of Trojan-horse programs collectively known as a root kit... The Trojan programs allow normally untraceable access, so there is not as much sanitizing that the intruder must do to cover his tracks." This is false or at least muddled. A root kit is known in the industry as a set of post-compromise tools used to clean logs, Trojanize binaries, and open alternate back doors. A root kit is not traditionally used to gain initial access, although "one-stop-shopping" tools might include cradle-to-grave exploitation.
On the positive side, the chapter on choosing an ISP was informative. I enjoyed seeing various WAN technologies discussed together, too. Unfortunately, this could not compensate for the confused and hurried material found elsewhere. I recommending avoiding this book until stronger literary and technical editors publish a second edition.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent resource, January 2, 2002
This review is from: The Concise Guide to Enterprise Internetworking and Security (Paperback)
I'm very pleased with this book. It's been an excellent reference material. My copy of the book is all marked up with underlining and high lights in area's I've needed to get up to speed on.
I work for a very large AeroSpace contractor in the Computer Security department. I needed a resource that I could get my hands on critical underlying OS information quickly. I found that in this book. It has already been a help in computer related investigations. I work both classified and unclassified networks. On the classified side of the house, this book has aided me in accrediting networks to insure data integrity and protection. I'm starting to see more and more upgrading of OS's. Per the NISPOM (National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual) when a classified system changes an OS or application that will "change" the security attributes of the system, it must be reaccredited. Again, I found great information in this book that talked about the changes between (for example) NT 4.0 and Win2K. As a result, I've required system owners to update their Security Plan and go through reaccredidation before actual implementation. Then, thanks to page 196, I was able to help them put together security audit tools.
Although I have not made it through cover to cover, I'm using the book a lot. It's definately a "Keeper".
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